


What They Never Knew

by NebulousMistress



Series: The Shadow Over Atlantis [8]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Denial, F/M, Feels, Gen, POV First Person, Transformation, did the research
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:07:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 7,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7181669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Denial is a powerful thing. These are the stories of those who were never told.</p><p>Eternally unfinished.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Katie Brown

The ugliest flowers smell the sweetest.

My Rodney fits that to a tee. God, he's ugly. He wasn't always though.

I knew something was wrong when we first dated. Other than the Cadman thing, I mean. I think it was his eyes.

Let me rephrase that. I knew there was something different about him when we started dating, and not just the fact that he was an adorable dork. There was this sense of wrongness about him. I don't have anything more than that and no one else seemed to notice so I never said anything. I almost said no when he first asked me out. I did say no after the Cadman thing.

But then I got to know him and he was the sweetest dork you could imagine. An absolute dork to be sure, tripped over his words and scrambled to correct himself and he blushed in just the cutest way when he was embarrassed. So I asked him out.

He was so cute tripping over himself to say yes then not to seem so excited. And then work happened and, you know he has the attention span of a goldfish? It's cute when it's turned toward you but as soon as something happens he's off again. He was lucky I work with plants and am more than capable of entertaining myself while he and Zelenka ran around the city playing with their toys.

But he said yes and we started actually dating and...

I still shudder when I remember the first time I saw it all. He assured me he wasn't contagious but...

His skin was bad even before that stupid ascension machine. Scaly and pale and it must have been itchy as all hell because he made the cutest noises when I... Well... Ahem.

When we first made love we left the lights on. I'd seen him before and he said he didn't mind if I had to close my eyes. He was amazingly sweet, especially then. He liked nuzzling me all over and there was this odd sound he'd make. It was like... purring? It couldn't have been, though, humans can't purr.

But he did.

And then that stupid ascension machine happened. He came to me once during the whole thing, to say he was sorry. He never said what for, though. That was the last time Rodney kissed me.

Afterward he was different, like he never really came back. Even physically. First it was the webbed hands. At least he let Carson fix those. But then his skin got worse and he got really really creepy. His eyes were the worst.

His eyes were always off. Big and blue and pure and just a bit too much. Too big, too blue, too pure. Like too much of a good thing. I couldn't look at them long. But after the machine...

I don't know... It sounds crazy but his eyes were just plain **wrong**. They blinked wrong, they stared wrong, they looked wrong, they just felt wrong. Like there was too much blue, too much pupil, too much eye. Like they could stare through a person. And in the dark...

I still shudder when I think of what Rodney looked like in the dark.

Eyes aren't supposed to **glow**.

But his did.

I tried, I really did. And he was still so sweet, still an adorable dork. I wanted him to be **my** adorable dork but I wanted him to be like he used to be! I...

I couldn't handle what was happening to him. Damn Dr. Keller for not even trying to stop it.

She didn't, you know. I asked Rodney why she couldn't do anything. He just said it was a genetic thing, his dad had this 'condition'. It wasn't a condition it was a **disease**! It was destroying him! She should have done something, anything. But I never said it. I couldn't make him feel worse.

I didn't want to make him feel worse than this disease already did.

The last time we made love I was glad he had me on my belly. It meant I didn't have to look at him. But then he was biting me on the back of my neck and growling and there was this voice in my head that kept saying _mine mineminemine_...

I couldn't stay on Atlantis anymore.

My Rodney was a sweet, sweet man.

But that's not my Rodney. Not anymore. Something happened to him and I can't sit around hoping to get him back.

I'm leaving Atlantis.

He'll understand. I hope.

 


	2. Kate Heightmeyer

I wish Dr. McKay would talk to me.

Oh, we have our mandatory biweekly meetings. He talks about his team and how worried he gets that one day they'll all die because he wasn't able to solve a problem. He talks about the city and how much it hurts him when he loses a scientist. He talks about his life here and how scared he is that it'll all come to an abrupt end.

Dr. McKay is an incredibly brave man but all he talks about is fear.

His greatest fear is living while he watches everyone around him die.

I understand why. It happens often enough in our line of work. He's had to watch several good people die, many on his order. I can't imagine the pain that must cause him.

But there's a deeper pain in him, one he won't talk about. I almost got him to open up once when one of our meetings coincided with the anniversary of his father's suicide. A 'gift', Rodney had said. His father called it a 'gift' and then went and killed himself because he was too much of a coward to accept the same 'gift' his son was cursed with.

I asked him what he thought that 'gift' might be. Rodney never answered me. I didn't press.

He never brought it up again.

Like most of his past. Oh he talks about the science fair and activities and awards but never about his actual life. It's a cunning smokescreen, talking about yourself without saying a word. It lets people think they know you while retaining absolute privacy.

I'm most curious about his time in New England. I studied some of the culture-bound syndromes of the area during my PhD. I suspect he has one.

It's all Lovecraft's fault. In the '40s a strange affliction began cropping up in Massachusetts. It was called the 'Innsmouth Look' due to its similarity to the story and its center around Arkham. A sad ailment, really, a psychosomatic illness that caused the skin to scale and the hair to fall out. In later stages the eyelids suffered paralysis, causing the watery unwinking stare so characteristic of the condition.

I've seen the skin on his arms. It's grey and scaling. His eyes don't blink right anymore. I'm worried about long term damage to his sight but there's nothing Carson can do about it.

There's nothing I can do about it if he doesn't talk to me.

I've identified the trigger event. The jumper crash. He spent several hours alone and concussed at the bottom of the ocean in a flooded jumper having just watched a man sacrifice himself. An event like that would be enough to break anyone.

He has nothing to be ashamed of.

But I can't help him unless he wants me to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The psychosomatic 'Innsmouth Look' is an insanity available for investigators who took part in Project Covenant. The 1940s would be when children rescued from the Innsmouth raid began to Change.
> 
> Source: Escape From Innsmouth by Chaosium.


	3. John Sheppard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after/related to s04e04 Doppleganger

McKay was right.

He is screwed up in the head.

I should know. I had to enter his dreams.

At first it wasn't that weird. A rowboat, open ocean, no way out, evil whale, pretty normal. Aside from the clown. I don't know whether that was my nightmare or his. Probably mine. I hate clowns.

But then McKay's dream got weird.

Really weird.

The evil me suggested we might as well jump in and McKay took him seriously. We dove in as the whale crunched the boat behind us.

I couldn't see worth a damn but I felt this hand, I think it was a hand, grab my wrist and drag me far and fast. I started fighting it. I had to breathe, right? Then there was this voice, Rodney's voice. “This is a dream, John. You can breathe underwater. Trust me.”

It's not like I had much of a choice. But Rodney was right, I could. Even though I still couldn't see.

But I could hear.

That evil whale was still chasing us. I don't know if we were swimming that fast or if it was just that slow but it lunged a few times and that hand on my wrist kept dragging me off in a feint. I think we were dodging it? Damn, I wish I could have seen what was happening but it was pitch dark and underwater and the only thing I could see was the faint green eyeshine of something keeping pace with me.

I think it was the thing dragging me along.

But this was Rodney's dream. Could that thing be him?

Then it got weirder.

In the distance I could see glowing and we made a bee-line for it. Slowly that glow resolved itself into towers? Pillars? Piers.

It was Atlantis. The city was alight and alive but underwater with her shield down. There was no way a human being could have survived that.

And then I saw.

Those weren't human beings.

These sea monsters came toward us armed with gold spears, swam past us toward the pursuing whale. I couldn't see much but they must have had hands and all their eyes glowed. Like...

“Rodney?” I asked. Hey, I didn't know I could talk underwater, either. Dreams are weird.

The hands that dragged me down here shifted to my shoulders so Rodney could hide behind me where I couldn't see him.

“Why are you hiding, hmm?”

I recognized my own voice. Great, so I could see the evil me but I couldn't see Rodney. Also, I looked really dumb in a giant scuba eyemask and goofy fins. The snorkel was a useless touch.

“Afraid he'll see you for what you really are? A **monster**?”

The thing behind me hissed. Sea monsters swam close and I could see them. They really were monsters, like black lagoon monsters with bigger heads and bigger feet. And gills. Also they swam better.

“Or are you just pretending? Like Dad was.”

“No...” Rodney's voice was right behind me. I tried turning around but I'm not that good in the water and Rodney stayed out of sight.

“Maybe you're too human. Maybe you're as far as you'll ever get. Just enough to be a monster, too human to survive.”

The sea monsters all around turned to stare at us. I did not like that stare. I liked it less when the hands holding me let go and I heard someone behind me choke.

Rodney.

I turned and watched him drown while the evil me laughed.

Rodney wasn't a monster after all. And then the scene changed and he was gone.

As I said, dreams are weird. I dream of flying all the time, sometimes even with wings. But I've never dreamed I was a monster.

Not like that.

 


	4. Laura Cadman

Dr. McKay is hiding something.

He's hiding a lot of things, I know. But I spent a week trapped in that body and let me tell you, he is nowhere near as out of shape as he wants us to believe.

Oh sure, I'd heard the stories too, the mission reports where you wonder if distances were exaggerated or times were misjudged or if gravity was low or maybe someone forgot to write down all the whining. Missions where the objective is 20+ miles from the gate and foot travel times are less than seven hours are not uncommon coming from Sheppard's team.

I dismissed them too. Now I don't.

It started the first night I took control of that body. Huge, clunky, wide, the center of gravity was all weird. Still, I needed to think. Running's good for that.

I wasn't sure that body could handle it at first. McKay has this layer of blubber all around his, well, everywhere. I started overheating real quick so I headed outside.

The piers are great for running. There's just this vast empty area, no walls or corridors to gauge distance, you can just run and forget everything. Even out in the night air I overheated but once I got the shirt and shoes off it was...

How do I describe this.

That man is a machine.

I have no idea how far I ran but it was hours before I stopped and I wasn't even tired! I swear I could have gone all night like that but I was starving and the cafeteria has a 'no shirt no shoes no service' policy.

I guess the soreness didn't kick in until the morning after because McKay made a big deal about it but I didn't even notice. In fact, not two nights later I was ready to try something else.

After all, a body can't run like that unless it's been conditioned. It's all muscle memory. That conditioning needs to be kept up. I was curious, I wanted to know how he could keep up that condition with all of us completely unawares.

I mean, we'd notice McKay running down the corridors for fun.

But we wouldn't necessarily notice it if he wasn't technically in the city.

I took that body swimming.

Oh God, how do I describe it?

I started just doing laps off the recreational pier but the breathing and the kicking and the arm movements were all wrong. I had a helluva time trying to fight that body's instinctual memory so I stopped.

I just let that body do was it wanted.

What it wanted to do was freedive.

I knew the water was cold but I didn't feel it. I knew my vision should have been blurred but I could see as clear as day. I knew the night should have been pitch black but it was bright and clear and it unnerved me.

But the worst was how **good** it felt.

I've never swam using just my legs. It goes against everything I learned as a kid. You're supposed to use your arms to steer and propel and all sorts of things. But I didn't. I didn't even kick right, instead that body used a rhythm I'd never considered. It felt almost lazy but it was so easy...

From what I understand freedivers pack their lungs, hyperventilating to take in as much oxygen as possible then they swim only for one or two dives before quitting. That's not what I did.

I remember hitting the surface rarely, exhaling deep then inhaling once and that was all I needed. It was lazy but powerful. I honestly believe I could have swam around the entire city like that.

And then I realized I hadn't stayed in the boundaries of the recreational pier.

Atlantis can be horrifying when viewed from three miles out.

I lost control then. McKay feels panic like a ton of bricks, let me tell you. I'm glad I left his radio on the pier, otherwise the pickup would have been embarrassing.

“Fuck it all, Cadman, what were you thinking?! **Were** you even bloody thinking?! Are you trying to get us killed? Do you have any idea what lives out here?”

I didn't know what to say other than _I'm sorry._

“You're gonna be sorry if I can't get us back to the city.”

_I wasn't thinking, I'm sorry. But God, Rodney, the way you swim! It's like you're made for the water._

McKay growled, I could feel it in the depths of his chest. It felt wrong...

“You've seen **nothing** yet...”

I wondered what he meant. Then he took a deep breath and dove.

We went deep and we went **fast**. The water should have hurt his eyes, his legs should have been burning, there was no way a person could do that. We scared a school of fish feeding in the starlight. How does a human being scare a bunch of fish? Shouldn't they notice our slow ass?

He didn't stop until he needed air again, breaching just long enough to take in a new breath and then we were off again.

I don't know how long it took for us to get back to the pier but it was nowhere near long enough. Once we had solid floor under McKay's feet his panic turned sour. I could feel the emotions bleeding through the walls that separated us. Fury, terror, self-hatred, and an oppressive betrayal. I'd done something unforgivable. I'd seen something I wasn't supposed to, something I didn't even understand.

I still don't understand it.

McKay is hiding something amazing. I've watched him ever since I got my body back and sometimes I can see it. He'll be lost in thought or stuck on a problem and his eyes will wander out a window to the water. I can **feel** the longing in those eyes.

I can still feel the utter glorious freedom I felt while freediving with that body, lazily swimming in depths I can never reach again.

I wish I knew what he's hiding. Then maybe he wouldn't have to hide anymore.

 


	5. Elizabeth Weir

Rodney doesn't trust us.

Normally this would be a problem but I can't fault the results.

He's put his own life, body, and mind on the line to save this expedition and this city more times than I'd care to recount. He's been tortured, threatened, injured, and shot. He died in another timeline. He's tried to take bullets for others, walked into traps, offered to sacrifice himself. He's proven time and again that he's willing to suffer and even die for us. I trust him with my life and the lives of every member of this expedition.

But he doesn't trust us.

At first I worried it was his ego. I've seen ego take down lesser men and I did not relish the idea of trying to find his replacement in our ranks. But then I had to watch as his ego was ripped away from him as thoroughly as Koyla's men flayed the skin from his arms. He needed skin grafts for the damage done during Genii torture.

It's not ego. Or not just ego. Rodney doesn't trust us.

I have spent the past two and a half years trying to figure out why.

I think I know now.

Why did it take so long for me to figure it out? It's so obvious but it's also so outlandish...

I've seen his condition before.

I was working on my anthropology PhD when I saw it. We were in the South Pacific to study some of the isolated cultures still relatively untouched by World War 2 or nuclear testing. There was this one island, largely isolated, we'd been told it was cursed, that the people there were monsters.

My advisor wouldn't leave it alone. We went.

It wasn't what I'd expected. First of all, the people were a lot less... nude than I'd come to expect in the area. They draped themselves in sheer fabrics and hid their faces from us. Only their leader showed himself freely. He demanded we stay on our boat out of sight of the cove while he spoke to their 'gods' about our arrival. We were bound by a chant he performed to abide by their god's decision. So we waited.

With binoculars. My advisor was not going to let superstition get in the way of study.

I still remember the monsters. They didn't come from the sea, they came from beneath those drapes of fabric and veils of scarves. Gasping mouths, huge eyes, shining skin, palpitating gills. Half-human monsters who greeted their inhuman gods from the sea.

Somehow the Deep Ones looked saner than their hybrid spawn.

I've seen Rodney in the infirmary, hastily covering those same shining scales. I've watched him gape affronted as a problem eluded him. I've seen his eyes and how they shine in the dark.

I know what he is.

I gave him the chance to admit his heritage to us during his brush with ascension. I told him to release his burdens, to shed himself of anything that caused him shame or anger. Or guilt. I almost accused him directly when I suggested he uses his intelligence to make up for a perceived lack. I still wonder if he read my mind then.

I know he knows what he is. I've seen him gazing longingly at the sea often enough. I was there when he insisted, adamant beyond adamant, that if we had to move the city it be to a planet with a large ocean.

When we're safe from the Asurans I will have to confront him. He doesn't deserve to be trapped halfway between one form and another like those monsters.

When we're safe. This can wait for after the move.

I trust him to keep us safe until then.

 


	6. Teyla Emmagan

When I was growing up I thought I was a monster.

I could sense the Wraith even at a young age. My father called it a gift, the same gift he held, and warned me to keep it quiet from the others. This gift set us apart from them, he said. But it was what allowed us to keep them safe.

That is what monsters do, yes? Keep their people safe?

I remember several small cullings early in my life. My father would stand still and silent, listening for something that only he could hear. I soon learned that the voices in my head, the pain between my eyes, that is what he listened to. When the pain got loud enough to make me cry, when I could see it as a clouding in his eyes, he called out to all our people and led us all to the caves. We would hide until the pain ended and the voices grew distant before returning to our village to pick up the pieces of our lives.

I never called us monsters to anyone but myself.

And then not even to myself. Not anymore.

Monsters are never culled. All the legends from all the worlds say monsters are **never** culled.

I remember the day my father died. The pain was blinding but I still remember.

Nyall had tripped during the flee to the caves. Father stayed behind, tried to get him back on his feet. I stopped running, tried to go back for them but my father caught my eyes. I could clearly hear the words 'no, Teyla, go, save the others' in my mind.

Then the culling beam came for them.

Monsters are never culled. I knew then I am no monster. I am nothing more than a girl who can sense the Wraith, whose 'gift' sets her apart from all others.

Monsters are just stories, I told myself. Nothing more than stories.

Years passed and I remained just a woman with a gift. I became a leader and I became the one who listened for voices only I could hear. I became the one who led my people to safety.

Until the people from Atlantis came and I failed my people. I was too busy to listen to the voices. I did not even feel the pain between my eyes until I heard the first darts. I doubted even my gift then, wondered if it was a curse to be ashamed of. Perhaps I had become a demon.

I hid my gift from the people of Atlantis. I ignored the voices even as the Wraith ambushed us again and again. When the pendant was discovered I discarded it along with any resolve to use my 'gift' again. I would stay silent. I would ignore the voices. I would not be a demon.

Then I began to sense the Wraith on Atlantis and the people here began treating me different. I had become something else to them, no longer just Athosian or even a human. I was something different.

The people of Atlantis were afraid of me, yes, but they helped me develop my gift. They taught me to use my meditation to hear the voices, the Wraith mental contact, from across worlds and through the void between stargates. They helped me realize that this gift does not make me a demon.

It separates me from them, same as it separated my father and myself from my people.

I am a monster.

Which leads me to wonder.

Do not the people of Atlantis have their own monsters?

 


	7. Samantha Carter

When I first met McKay he was a pig.

A complete and utter pig. Dismissed my ideas, belittled my theories, hit on me with a singular desperation, and even after I was proven right he tried to steal the credit. I swear, he was lucky I didn't deck him right then and there. A black eye woulda looked good on that piggy face of his.

I have no idea what Dr. Weir saw in him. All right, I can admit he's a genius. He is without a doubt one of the smartest men I have ever known. He just has the ego to go along with it.

I dunno, maybe he visited his mother or something. Yes, I know he says his mother's dead but I read his file. She's not dead just... as good as. Mental facility. Usually catatonic, sometimes violent. Something like that would snap the wind out of any sail.

But that doesn't explain the current situation.

I read the report about the ascension machine, about Dr. McKay's near-death experience and his return from the dead. The machine is still there, the room sealed with a “no admittance upon pain of death, uncontrollable telepathy, death, opening terrifying vistas of reality, death, insanity, and death.” I swear, the sign posted has 'death' listed on it four times. It's posted in English, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Ancient, and I swear someone must have added Wraith in the past week because I do not recognize those last symbols.

I read what the machine did but oddly enough the records as to the aftermath were sealed by Carson's order.

I heard about the reconstructive surgery for McKay's hands. What I can't figure out is why Carson stopped there.

There's much more wrong with Dr. McKay than a simple hand issue and I can't trace it from any other recorded incident. Surely this didn't happen at Area 51? There would have been an incidence report.

Why did Carson seal the records? I can't even ask him about it and Dr. Keller is less than forthcoming. She's young, she doesn't understand that I need to know these things. This isn't an Earth hospital and I am not mere law enforcement. If McKay expects to continue to be permitted to do his job both on and offworld then he needs to be up front about what physical changes are taking place.

McKay's exposure to the ascension machine was reckless but I don't want to have to ground him or his team without reason. If he allowed medical to monitor what's happening to him, submitted to regular psyche evals... I've been around the galaxy enough to accept whatever that machine did to him if only he's willing to let us keep track.

Ever since we lost Midway he's been worse. I can hear when it's him in the hallway, he has this odd loping gait that sounds a like a gallop. He smells odd, kind of fishy. His voice has deteriorated in the year I've been here. His skin is horrible and his bone structure looks all wrong.

I think 'mutation' should be added to the warning list on that ascension machine. I hear Zelenka kept McKay from adding 'forced viewing of colleague's sexual fantasies' to the list; I didn't even want to ask.

I'll bring it up with Sheppard when I get back. First I have this annual evaluation with the IOA to take care of. Why does it have to be in person?

When I get back.

 


	8. Daniel Jackson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set before/related to s05e10 First Contact

When I first met Dr. McKay he took me seriously.

That requires some convincing, I know. You've met the... man, I guess? Are we still calling him that? Okay.

You've met the man. He takes nothing about my field seriously. Doesn't even consider it science for some reason. But that's okay. Really, I'm used to it. You have no idea how many years I spent trying to convince people of my theories before I saw for myself their validity, their potential.

So, no, he didn't take my field seriously. Or my presence. Or the situation. Mostly he was focused on trying to get his hybrid paws on Sam. Not that I knew it at the time but even then I think I had my suspicions. After all, he'd just taken me seriously.

Teal'c was trapped in the stargate's buffer and we had 48 hours to get him out before we were going to be forced to resume gate activity. At that point his pattern would be lost and he'd cease to exist.

It was about a day in when I made the suggestion to let me try something.

Jack looked uncomfortable as I know he's always been with this. Sam called out with a headache. But Rodney?

First he asked me if I was insane.

He didn't give me any time to answer before he launched into his other demands.

'Did you have some sort of plan in mind or were you just going to ask nicely?'

'You realize Yog-Sothoth has no interest in our little problems, right?'

'The Gate works fine right now, why would you think Yog-Sothoth would even care?'

'Wait, how, what, did the Air Force really authorize a sacrifice?'

Jack shut him up then and shot down my plan. More of an idea, really. But once we got Teal'c back and Rodney got sent back to Area 51 I got to thinking.

He had taken me seriously.

And he knew what he was talking about. In fact, he knew more then than I knew then. I hadn't actually gotten to a copy of the Necronomicon before then, I'd been operating mostly on rumor and what we learned from the neutral worlds.

It all makes sense now.

I met Professor Randall from Miskatonic University once. He'd taken a look at my ideas and directed me to studies done on certain standing stones in Continental Europe. I know that was the same man who recommended Dr. McKay into Area 51. I'd always wondered what he put in out midst.

Rodney's the Deep One on Atlantis, isn't he?

Ha! I **knew** it! Jack has **got** to let me go there now. Think of what we could learn!

And I believe I have an excuse. I have evidence Janus kept a lab on Atlantis...

 


	9. Todd the Wraith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during s04e09 Miller's Crossing

I remember the monsters.

We have other names for them. The Diaspora, the Forsaken.

The Forbidden.

I remember the beginnings of our war with the Lanteans. We did not feed on the Diaspora, not when there were so many sweet-tasting humans for the having. I do not remember when it became taboo to feed on them, I took my name long after the taboo was in place. But I remember the taboo.

I remember watching my queen feed upon the drone who violated that taboo. I remember what we were made to do with the offal.

We keep this taboo for a reason. Worlds run by the Diaspora develop quickly, breed fully, recover from cullings with great speed. They are worlds of abundance and worlds of challenge, for the Diaspora remember us as we remember them. Their worlds arm themselves for the cull, giving us a glorious battle to delight in and runners to chase as eternal prey.

I faced down a Diaspora once. I had taken its Fata, its Voice. Without its Fata the Diaspora had no one who could speak for it. It was a furious beast but its small claws and tiny teeth were no match for a mere kick to its furry head. Its blood felt like sacrilege on my boots.

Now I have the chance to face down a Diaspora again. But this time, not as an enemy.

Rodney McKay works beside me, silent to all outside observers. We are not in a safe location, this SGC base. Imagine my surprise and delight when I realized this human-pretender could speak in a civilized manner. I don't even think he realized he was doing it. But, knowing or not, he does it now as we silently argue over programming and nanites and courses of treatment, only the occasional change of expression and his inhumanly large eyes betraying the discourse between us.

I wonder what manner of Diaspora this McKay will become. Is he perhaps some human-shaped monster like the Wraith-blooded Teyla believes herself to be? Or will he become something more interesting?

I do hope it's the latter.

 


	10. Peter Kavanagh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the first chapter of [Open Secrets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6801316)

I can't believe I never knew.

I've only been studying Lovecraft my entire life! I double-majored in literature for my undergrad just because of his work. I would have gone on with it if I hadn't found higher level math and what it all meant.

So much of Lovecraft's work parallels real world math. I was the first to realize it. I **know** I was the first, I remember having to defend that very thesis in front of a group of small-minded, unimaginative idiots who couldn't even begin to comprehend the extra dimensions beneath it all! It was that thesis that got me into the SGC, I know it, I remember seeing them among the observers, the men in black flanking some generic professorial-looking man. At least they saw the potential of what I knew.

I should have been the one to know about him. Hell, I should have known that first year! We were cut off from Earth, supplies running low, no luck finding a ZPM, and of course nobody was letting me do any of the looking. I would have found something. There are patterns in reality, in the fabric of space and subspace that McKay doesn't even know how to begin looking for! I know I can reprogram the sensors to find it, I did all the calculations but Weir never let me do the work.

And now she's dead. Been dead a year.

Good riddance.

How could I have missed this? Something so obvious? I was just stuck with McKay's fishy ass in the middle of the intergalactic void for two weeks. Is it because he blinks?

Maybe that's it. Maybe I was so caught up in Lovecraft's descriptions that I didn't think to question.

Biology isn't my strong suit. Maybe it should have been.

No, no it shouldn't have been. I won't be limited like that.

I won't!

I can't believe I didn't notice! Proof that all my theories were correct, that I wasn't crazy, that I wasn't wasting my time being shunted from posting to posting within the SGC because the military idiots in charge can't comprehend what I know.

The fishy smell, the ominous dreams, the scars on his hands, the gill shunts under the skin of his neck, and especially those eyes.

The Marsh family eyes have nothing to do with shape or size or incline or anything like that. It's a color. A bright, clear, ocean blue too pure to be human. Ironic that it comes from the human side of that family.

Well I know now.

It's more than misguided Cthulhu cults, more than the all-too-common gate-worship. It's not mere faith anymore.

It's reality.

I can't stay here. The headaches have already begun and I **know** no one else understands what that means.

Let them become his Nest and all that entails. I have more important things to do.

 


	11. Rodney McKay

I was five years old when Dad told me.

I think. I'm not entirely sure how old I was, only that everything was changing at the time. The schools realized I was testing into grade levels higher than my age, my piano teacher was singing praises at my skill and lamenting my father's webbed hands, the other kids were learning to shun me. It was about the time my teachers tried to force me into right-handedness just to make their jobs easier when my father sat me down while Mom was out and told me.

“You have my mother's eyes,” he said. “Do you know what that means?”

I didn't, of course. I knew Gramma had big blue eyes and she always smelled weird, like I always thought the sea might smell like. I hadn't even seen the ocean then, not yet, so I didn't know how right I'd been.

“We have a legacy, Meredith,” he said to me. “You and I and Gramma and her family before her. Bad people tried to destroy that legacy and they almost did, they killed so many of us but your Gramma survived. She escaped when she was... not much older than you.”

I remember nodding, wide-eyed and awed.

“She kept that legacy alive inside herself all those years. When I was born she shared it with me. And now you, Meredith, you carry it as well. I can see it in your eyes.”

“What does it look like?” I asked.

Dad chuckled in that odd hissing laughter I still remember. “The entire ocean lives in your eyes,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. That was silly, the entire ocean? The ocean was huge and I was just a child, there was no way it could fit.

“It does,” he promised. “And as you grow older it'll start trying to come out to change the rest of you.” He splayed his hands in front of me, showing the webbing that spread halfway up his fingers. “It's changing me.”

The backs of his hands were rough, like the skin was thick and scabby. But his palms were wet, slightly oily, the same clamminess they always were. The skin between was tight yet supple and it would have disturbed me if he hadn't been my father.

I remember looking up into my father's eyes, saw them shining back at me like an animal's eyes. Dad didn't have blue eyes. I wondered then if they'd been blue before and they'd turned green when the ocean came out to change him. I reached up with a hand to touch his face and was surprised when he made a strange sound.

He was purring.

“Did Gramma change?” I asked.

The purring slowed but it didn't stop, not even as I heard his voice. But not with my ears. _She's almost Changed. Soon she'll take to the water and the ocean will claim her._

“And she'll die?”

_Of course not, child. Once we're Changed we will never die. We'll live forever in the city of our ancestors, Y'ha-nthlei._

My memory gets strange after that. I wonder if my own father didn't try to enthrall me to him as he purred and I saw images of the undersea city in my mind. I remember imagining beautiful wonders and grinning sharks that just wanted to be petted. There were undersea monsters and glowing sea creatures and above it all was a lurking shape in the water that unnerved me, a metal whale that spat torpedoes and shattered the coral spires. I remember being carried, I remember curling up in his arms in the bathtub.

I remember the water felt different that day. It didn't feel like wet or bathtime.

It felt like home.

 


	12. Radek Zelenka

I am not surprised.

I should be but I am not. I should be terrified of idea on principle. I should worry of loyalties, of being replaced now that we have contact with Earth. Why would he not replace me with one of his own kind? What else might he bring from Earth?

Yet I am not bothered. A saner man would question my own loyalty. A saner man would ask why I am not afraid.

I do not have to ask. I have known his kind before, worked with them.

I was young, seven months into two year conscription. I was taken out of normal service after I repaired electronic game owned by Praporshchik. It was heavy favor, the game was contraband from West Berlin, and we were found out. I do not know what happened to my commander but I was transferred. I showed considerable skill, instincts, and secrecy, they say. I would be brought into important project, they say. My efforts would protect Czechoslovakia by keeping Soviet Union strong, they say. I would comply or they kill my family, they did not say. They did not have to say.

The compound was on Black Sea. I could not tell where, not now, not then. There was much underground. They did not tell me what I would work on. They simply took me to her cell, allowed me to see my doom, and locked me in.

She terrified me when I first saw her. I think I screamed. I remember efreitors outside laughing at me, telling me to run. Run little rabbit. Monsters will eat you. Run and run and run until monsters catch you, kill you, eat you.

But there was nowhere to run.

Her eyes shone in darkness, glowing like his eyes do now. Large, bright, angry, so angry. She was imprisoned and now I was trapped in cage with her.

She was horrifying. She was beautiful. Her scales shimmered like stars in night sky, cascades of bright spots on dark blue. Her eyes, blue-black, solid color without pupil. Her hands and belly, pale grey. She moved like barn owlet, hissing and weaving and scraping her claws on cell floor. Her teeth clicked as she snapped jaws at me. But I did not scream again. I did not throw myself at cell door to escape.

This intrigued her. She stopped hissing, instead watching as she crept closer to me. I knew then, this was intelligent monster, maybe smarter than I was, unable to speak.

Or so I thought.

_Are you to be food or entertainment? What do my tormentors demand this time?_

She did not speak with words. There were sounds but the words came from my head.

“I do not know,” I said. “They told me I'd be working on an important project then threw me in here.”

She hissed and somehow I knew it was not directed at me. _They have me fiddling with wires and transistors as if these electronic switches matter. There's no elegance to following their designs. I refuse. They've sent three others in here, men who wouldn't stop screaming until I ate them. But you don't scream anymore._ She crept up to me, snout at my nose. _You can hear me..._

“Yes,” I said. “I hear you.”

The voices outside her cell went quiet.

_I am Dh'ela-na'ua and I will keep you. You will make them listen to me._

I did not know then what I'd agreed to. But I agreed all the same.

It has been years since I last saw her and that grief was a hot pain in my soul for years.

Until Antarctica.

I did not know then why the pain faded. Why I could now find peace in my work. Why I follow Rodney McKay without question but still bait him with plenty of argument. Why I work so hard to keep him safe. I see it now.

She kept me for fifteen years. But I'm not hers anymore.

I still miss her.

I will always miss her. But I belong to another now.

And I am happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soviet military ranks taken from [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_ranks_of_the_Soviet_Union)


	13. Teal'c

I never met the Meredith. I met the man.

Jack O'Neill introduced him as 'the man who tried to leave me for dead'. I loomed over this man. He stood below me, physically cowering. But his words were not cowed. He justified his actions with a voice full of righteous arrogance even as Major Carter tried to silence him.

I did not blame him then. His actions were logical. There were men in the field, it would be a waste to abandon them. I appreciated Jack O'Neill's efforts to save my life but in his position I would have followed the expertise of the man then called McKay.

I have never told Jack O'Neill this. I do not believe he would understand. He often refuses to understand his own limitations. I believe he has become used to Daniel Jackson's unique circumstances.

I never saw the McKay again. I heard later on the man had become something called a 'Meredith'. I was off-world during the Meredith's stay at the SGC so I never got the chance to see him. Daniel Jackson was less useful than normal in his descriptions. Colonel Carter was not much better, which was strange. I have known them many decades longer than they both realize, I know something is different about them. I will find out what has happened.

Jack O'Neill is still unhelpful. I wonder if this is another event I cannot talk to him about.

I feel old. I feel nowhere near old enough. I feel like a child realizing my father's fathers have reached their elder years. I have seen too much and I will see far too much more.

There is someone I can ask. We have never met but she is the Meredith's sister. I will ask her.

I know I will regret this.

**Author's Note:**

> I am always taking suggestions for characters. Give me a name and I'll write what they believed.
> 
> I have a [tumblr](http://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/) where you can find a hundred little fanfics I never posted here. Check it out, drop a line, maybe dare me to write something for you.


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